ICS Working Paper Nº1/2018

ICS W O R K I N G P A P E R S 2018 11 fact, they must become politicized actors who actively engage with the dominant system, political and institutional status quo, even if it implicates an opening of the ‘protected niche space’ (cf. Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012). Furthermore, we must build on the assumption that there is a great pluralism and diversity of potential roles within niche level CBIs. For instance, a comparative study of 63 CBIs in Finland, Germany, Italy, Romania, Scotland, and Spain identified a set of internal (i.e. will to break the inherent unsustainable status quo; shared identity and values with participants) as well as external (i.e. the dominant system fails to satisfy socio-environmental needs and local empowerment; existence of a socio-political vacuum) factors that determined the motivation of their emergence. Interestingly, half the surveyed CBIs are offshoots of already existing ones. Regarding CBIs’ survival over time, factors such as their relation with governments and institutions or the adopted organizational structure turned out to matter (TESS, n.d.). Transition pathways are not sequential, linear processes of societal change and need continued flexibility and reflexivity “to adjust the policy mix to unexpected circumstances as the transition unfolds and new insights become available, again stressing the importance of considering the process of change as much as the outcome” (c.f. Hof et al., n.d.: 4). This recursive relational dynamics between CBIs and the social and material context is the cornerstone of Haxeltine et al.’s (2017) Transformative Social Innovation Theory (TSI theory - see Annex 2 in Appendix A for further details ). The latter places CBIs, their actors and networks as a manifestation of social innovation, that “shape and are shaped by changing social relations and associated institutional dynamics” (Haxeltine et al., 2017: 9) in a reciprocal relationship (Figure 3). Figure 3 - A transformative social innovation process and its interlinked dynamics (Haxeltine et al., 2017: 9)